The NFL has officially retracted their opposition to HR 2267, removing a strong opponent to online gambling from the current political game.

According to PokerNews, an NFL representative cites the King-Meeks amendment to HR 2267 as reason for the reversal: “We don’t oppose it since it now includes the language we had hoped for. The amended language adequately addressed our specific concern. We are pleased with the outcome.”

The amendment of note, introduced by HR 2267 co-sponsor Peter King (R-NY) excludes sports-betting from potentially regulated internet gambling. Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), the bill’s newest co-sponsor, also gave support to this amendment.

Also from Gambling Compliance … This may be kinda old news now, but something else GC made available for all us poker plebes is their July interview with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), sponsor of HR 2268, the legislation that lays out the structure for a new federal online gambling taxing machine, and the “companion bill” for Barney Frank’s HR 2267, which, of course, sets up the bureaucracy that poker players collectively have been clamoring for.

McDermott makes a cautious prediction starting at about 4:57, saying, “It is very very likely that this bill will pass” before the end of the year. He then explains how and why he believes online gambling supporters on the Hill can win over the necessary Congressfolk, “one Member at a time”:

This interview came before the HR 2267 mark-up hearing, where the bill moved forward with a bigger margin of bipartisan victory than expected … presumably made easier by the various amendments added by representatives from across the country and across the political spectrum.

Because you can’t have McDermott’s bill, 2268, without 2267 — and 2267 means little in terms of practical application without 2268 — they totally go together. But until the two are merged, this dual-bill process also creates additional spots for cutthroat backstabbing shenanigans parliamentary maneuvers across the aisle should some influential sort not like the way the bill is taking shape for their client/big-donor’s competitive interest. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works … but to borrow a phrase from McDermott, not gonna say 100 percent.

So … watch and see?

For those not familiar, Gambling Compliance is one of a small handful of uberwonk journals for executive-types in the online gambling world. With offices in London and Washington DC, GC puts out high-level industry analysis that at least a handful of insiders find worth a £3,000-£5,000 in Europe subscription fee.

But they do make some content occasionally available for public consumption by non-subscribers. One I’ve been meaning to share for a while is the perfect companion piece to KevMath’s markup of HR 2267. (Supposedly Congressional staffers charged with the official cut-and-paste need a few more days to do what KevMath got done more than a week ago.)

Check it out … I like the cool, color-coded map; but the most important stuff is probably the breakdown by industry sector, explaining who has likely been affected how by the different amendments attached to the bill being sent to the floor. The report comes with an easy to browse table of amendments, too:

HR 2267 Frank Bill Amendments

Most interesting and plausibly relevant to our little world, imho, are provisions laid out in Rep. John Campbell’s (R-CA) amendment, which creates a “black list” of non-compliant operators. More…

Internet super-behemoth Google seems to be wasting little time positioning themselves to profit from licensed internet gambling in the United States by investing in “social gaming”.  Both the New York Times and Techcrunch are reporting that Google has agreed to purchase “Slide”, a software development company specializing in Facebook apps involving the exchange of virtual money.

Sale price estimates range from $182 million to $228 million (in real money). Supposedly, Google will officially announce the acquisition tomorrow.

This follows last week’s quiet confirmation from Google CEO Eric Schmidt about their partnership with Zynga – clarifying speculative reports in July that Google had “secretly” invested $150 million or so in the enormous play-money poker site.

With a current user base of 28 million budding poker degens at the ready, Zynga is primed for real-money poker with their popular Facebook app Texas HoldEm Poker. You can read more about Zynga’s interest in HR 2267 from Business Insider: JACKPOT FOR ZYNGA: Congress Wants To Legalize Online Gambling.

Conveniently, Zynga uses PayPal for a method of payment (and happens to be PayPal’s biggest client).  This method of payment — turned off years ago for anything related to gambling — could be ideal for a would-be internet gambling licensee under HR 2267 with Barney Frank’s Manager’s Amendment, which prohibits credit card transactions for gambling should his bill become law.

Amazing. Didn’t think it could be done. Yet the entities at Wicked Chops keep getting better and better at this whole video talk format, and if you look/listen closely you might start to believe that they’re actually not unintelligent, uninformed, uncouth sexist, racist wankers. Clearly WCP’s marketing department must be going ape-shit over this travesty and calling for someone’s firing if “the entities” are gonna go on-air every week and disgrace the Wicked Chops brand.

For those of you who didn’t see it — or get to watch in full — here’s an hour and 40minutes of the masters of poker low-brow taking on the headier issues of the poker day … with their special guests this week Annie Duke, John Pappas, and me … joining the crew for my first ever video Skype at 53:00 if you’re short on time and have to get right to the good stuff.

Also fans of @JessWelman will wanna be sure to check out the early part of the show, where she makes her debut appearance delivering news briefs and tackling matters of poker pop culture such as Beth Shak’s forthcoming season on Miliionaire Matchmaker.

* Seriously, not sure what I kept looking at way up in the sky. Video-chat clearly adds 10 pounds.

Really you should probably tune in every week … but especially this week, as yours truly takes his talking head to a new level — joining the dudes from Wicked Chops, the PPA’s John Pappas, and Annie Duke. (I’m pretty sure I’m the Skype video-chat guy with Annie in studio.)

HR 2267 will be the topic du jour … looking forward to it for sure! Say what you will about Annie Duke (I generally do, both good or bad), but she’s one of the few big-wig pros with whom I can engage in an intelligent conversation about hefty and heady matters. The others tend to either be so caught up in their own world it’s at best a 1.25-way convo, or they say little more than what their keepers (or kept) are putting out in press releases. You don’t have time for that!

More info about today’s show here … which is also where you can pass on the questions you’d like Annie or the WCPs to theoretically address. (I’m telling you now, it’s hit or miss with me today, as I likely won’t be listening so much as I’ll be tending to my hair in the little Skype video chat square.)

Also making her debut on the show will be Jess Welman, my very favorite Poker Beat cohort who happens to be a 20something red-headed female.

Uh, hairy times … not just because Wicked Chops is making a big leap in confronting their their long-held follicular prejudices — I guess we all were a little inspired by Chesea Clinton’s wedding — but also because there’s a lot to discuss about poker, politics, online gambling, and a shifting mutibillion-dollar industry … all the stuff that matters occasionally at the very bottom of a mainstream news budget.

Should lead to some top-quality discourse and debate. Or if we’re lucky, one of us will start throwing chairs.

T.W.I.P. streams live at 4pm PT here.

I think we all know how much Congress’s approval would soar if they had more @KevMath. While many legal- and poli-minded folks have been waiting for a “red-line” version of a marked-up HR 2267 — with properly inserted and deleted amendments, as per voice votes and roll call — Kevin Mathers took it upon himself to do what Congressional staff couldn’t … or at least hadn’t yet.

He makes no promise of 100-percent accuracy, but based on his reads, clicks, cuts and pastes … Here is a cleaned up version of what Barney Frank’s House Financial Services Committee overwhelmingly agreed to send to the floor of the House of Representatives for further legislative action — the new-and-improved HR 2267 according to Kevmath.

ALT HED: (Way) Outside Washington DC

Maybe I’m expecting too much from Annie … just watched her on MSNBC’s noon-time news, and I think if I were her opponent in this mini-debate I coulda blown her outta the water — even without believing anything I was saying! Fortunately, the opposition she’s up against here is so weak, she still clearly wins. The best psychology professor Tim Kelly’s got is some report about gambling addiction from 1999. As if anything related to the internet has any perception of validity when it comes from an era that existed before Windows XP … let alone the iPhone, the iPod, the War on Terror, and George W. Bush’s first term.

Check it out here and watch for yourself.

What I find most fascinating here is the sponsor for this news segment … GFT Forex online currency trading. Risk based on limited, imperfect information … clearly elements of skill with some players guaranteed to win and others guaranteed to lose … exchanging money over international boundaries … come play for free with a practice account? They just don’t have to make you go to a dot-net for that.

Seriously, check out this old ad and ask yourself … how is this high-variance online financial game any different than something you might see on Full Tilt? I think they’ve even got some of the same avatars!

Here is the breakdown of yesterday’s vote in the House Financial Services Committee. I’m curious about those who chose NOT to vote, and libertarian-wise … Ron Paul’s declaration of “present” — despite his stated support of HR 2267 a week earlier. Obviously had to be a reason … and Paul’s generally not afraid of his voters turning on him, and his seat seems hardly in peril.

(I posed the question to him or his people on twitter. Will look for but not expect a response, despite < 140 words finagled to sound more constituenty ... #semibluff)

Data via the PPA.

Getting caught up and back in the swing of things — slowly but surely — so what better way than to listen to the most recent episode of The Poker Beat?

The Poker Beat: July 22, 2010

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Rookie twitterer @GaryWise1 took his turn in Capt. Huff’s chair as @BJNemeth and @JessWelman panel-bantered about:

• The pre-markup hearing in DC with Annie Duke
• Make-up of the 2010 November Nine
• The value, if any, of poker agents — and how the WSOP accommodates them during the main event
• BJ’s philosophical non-dilemma over coverage of Matt Affleck’s emotional bustout *
• The difference between poker media and poker journalism
• The Year of Mizrachi and the accidental WTF? of the current WSOP Player of the Year scoring system
• Annette Obrestad’s B- performance
• The 3-headed Monster of Team WSOP without @JeffreyPollack
• WSOP numbers and final table times

* great explanation, BJ. But question … Is there any discernable line where the “field of play” in poker begins, and ends?

Other episode-relevant links:

The Redemption of Matt Affleck by Gary Wise
The Long, Lonely Walk of Matt Affleck by Howard Swains (with photos by Joe Giron)

Next ep coming tomorrow. Play along in the PokerRoad forums.

A press release from the PPA regarding the passage of HR 2267 from the House Financial Services Committee by a vote of 41-22.

More…

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Editor’s Note: After seven months of what seemed like stall-and-get-nowhere — and a delay yesterday until today — the poker-friendly legislation that Barney Frank (and the PPA) has been pushing and refining since 2007 faces a critical vote. It’s an all-in situation … if we “win”, legislative matters related to online poker and gambling still have a ways and means? to go before seeing the desk of Barack Obama. However, if we lose — as we did by a tie vote back in 2008 — it’s back to the drawing board.

You can watch it all going down here, assuming there aren’t shenanigans in play to delay matters further. And because there’s always a chance I don’t know WTF I’m talking about, Pokerati has deployed a Beltway team to not only keep us posted on today’s developments from the Hill, but also to provide a primer on what’s really in play today for the future of internet gambling and/or poker in America.

You can follow reports from the Hill today on Twitter with @Scarlet_LV, and below is more about what she’s walking into.

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HR 2267 Markup

A special report for Pokerati by @Scarlet_LV
photos by James Berglie / Be Photography

If all goes well, the House Financial Services Committee will decide today the fate of HR 2267, which seems to be the keystone for any new laws that stand to eliminate burdens of the UIGEA and establish a framework for the future of licensed and regulated online poker in the United States.

Today’s hearing is a “mark-up”, where the full committee debates amendments to a bill, and votes on a motion to send the bill to the House floor with recommendations on the amendments to consider for a decisive vote. Make sense?

I’m pretty sure that’s how it works — but I never would’ve expected two weeks ago when dealing the WSOP that I’d be on Capitol Hill watching a different (but not too different) game with so much riding on the deals being cut. For more explanation, see house rules and parliamentary procedures here and here.

H.R. 2267 Internet Gambling Regulation and Consumer Protection, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act.

To amend title 31, United States Code, to provide for the licensing of Internet gambling activities by the Secretary of the Treasury, to provide for consumer protections on the Internet, to enforce the tax code, and for other purposes.

Having attended last week’s meeting, I met this week with people who could fill me in on the amendments the Committee will be discussing today. Though more or fewer are possible, here’s what most expect:

1. Barney Frank “Managers Amendment” — the contents of this will not be disclosed to anyone before the markup, but it will provide the baseline used to “define the debate”
2. Brad Sherman –- his amendment will likely look to limit licensing to US-only companies and those that have not been acting “outside the law”.  Supposedly “smaller internet gaming companies” might be able to get around this if added to the bill, but bigger companies with a notable TV presence (such as FullTilt, PokerStars, and UB) would not be able to so easily if at all.
3. Spencer Bachus / Michele Bachmann –- perhaps with elements of Sherman’s amendment included (I peeked over the shoulder of some lawyer suits holding it yesterday, he’s looking to completely gut the bill and more regulation to strengthen anti-gambling components of the UIGEA.

With these potential amendments, you get a sense of the driving forces currently behind the bill, and the key players. These became apparent during last week’s hearing — which sources tell me was rather unusual for a bill like HR 2267 to get a second hearing like that — as testimony from Members and witnesses helped shape matters that will be in play today.

As the mark-up proceeds, here are the different Members and groups claiming a stake in this piece of legislation.

More…

Watch the markup hearing here

The markup hearing of the House Financial Services Subcommittee started shortly after 10am. The schedule is to discuss HR 2267 until 11am ET, then take a one-hour break. The Committee will return at 12pm for more discussion with a vote scheduled by 2pm ET.

With the markup of HR 2267 scheduled during the House Financial Services Committee today, Greg Raymer appeared on Fox Business to discuss regulating and licensing Internet poker. Video of Raymer’s appearance now appears below:

The battle over Barney Frank’s HR 2267 is heating up, and he seems to have found allies in sensible albeit unusual places. Specifically, supporting efforts to dismantle – or at least rebuke and revise – the UIGEA are the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks.

A letter they all sent to Congressional members yesterday:

More…